Having walked on the surface along the metro line a million times he knew what kind of majestic buildings were up there. Buildings that long since had forgotten their importance and were surrounded by the drones of popular culture and symbols of civilization’s downfall. He found it ironic that the coffee he held so gently between his fingers was of the very same origin as these pestering nuisances which he focused his hearts dismay upon. How strange that the feeling of this cup made him feel was, especially when it was unbearably hot with coffee, tranquillity. The coarse material suited his soul, he had decided, and he had to admit that the constant scratch just below his lover lip loved to be scratched by the edge of the plastic cover of the lid and it’s artificial feeling against his skin and reddish beard.

He had smiled and started whistling (on a tune he could not remember the name of) as he and the hundreds around him strolled right past the military guards at Port Royal to board the metro. They had held a young hip-hop looking boy, possibly with heritage from the Middle East, and questioned him on the open street, in what seemed to be against his will. As he had went past them he had wondered whether it had helped that he flourished his long blonde hair, and had perhaps too conspicuous combed his hand through his hair in the most movie-looking fashion he could muster.

At 16:57 he entered RER B at Port-Royal. Went past Luxembourg, Cluny – La Sorbonne, St.Michel – Notre Dame, and in the end arrived to Chatelet – Les Halles, where he went of. No coffee cup in hand.

”We are sorry to interrupt this program with this important notice: Today at 17:13 a bomb went of at Gare du Nord. The police and National Guard estimates over a hundred killed and more hurt in the accident. Police believes it to be a terrorist action, but have not yet received any confirmation from any group behind this act, and can see no clear motive. Anyone who might have had relatives…” He turned off the TV, whistling the same song as before. “Singing in the Rain” he told himself, with a surprised look.

Being able to walk amongst the ruins of the old he had unconsciously studied what seemed like all of the great old civilizations (which he of course knew it was not), and the literature he had read came swarming back to him. How many pages of the Lost Lore had he not skimmed through, pertaining to these marvels? The Romans and their huge promiscuous buildings, built to impress the public with great vaults and arches lying twisting and turning on the ground as they had long since fallen to pieces. Somehow this made it even more impressive, since you could without difficulty see how big their structures had been. Some places he had walked over their impressive concrete domes, and snuck a peek under them to see their decorated vaulted ceilings, and stood there for hours with his light-pen admiring the art. For hours he peered at the Byzantine ruins with their gentle and complex mosaic covered structures of stone (that had made his old enthusiasm for mathematics renew tenfold), that had been resting upon massive piers which in turn now rested amongst the great shards of glass colored by sheets of alabaster that once shone enlightenment and divinity through them. The crusaders castles standing like great kings on tops of mountains had served him as a great place to rest and scout towards his target on many occasions, but – as should be – they were never easy to get up to or in to. Perhaps the most extraordinary trip was through the hollow buildings in Beirut, slowly being recaptured by vile nature slinging itself through, between and around both skyscrapers and hard, merciless asphalt. Apparently nature did not take long to retake lost ground, because what had once been the Middle East’s party city was now like a jungle with distant memories of human grandness.

He had only had to use his weapons a few times, against things he had not been able to identify from any of his books, and he had to admit that he did not really know if these terrifying monstrosities had intended to hurt him. Perhaps they had even been sentient. What ever had been on their minds as they saw him, it was now splattered on the ground, and probably being eaten by birds, insects and other vermin. Even fewer times had he met people, and all of these encounters had been quite interesting, if not somewhat disgusting at times. The difficulty communicating was extraordinary, but they had managed to point him in the right direction (although he had no problem finding it alone with a compass) and traded small items. For some reason they had all tried to offer him old coins mixed with even older looking bottle caps for some of his equipment, which he of course respectfully refused, and had pondered over ever since.

Strangely enough he has spotted what seemed like a small encampment in the place he thought to be Sour. This would be most uncommon according to what he had already learned from the Wilderness. Few people lived there, and even fewer stayed put in one place for long. Two days of circling them, observing them and trying to learn if they were hostile or not brought him to the conclusion that they were mostly harmless people, and so he approached them, somewhat hungrily. He was met by two people riding strange creatures which could look like what used to be horses if he squinted with his eyes, according to his memory of Lost Lore. “Salaam aleykum” the riders yelled at him from afar.
- Waleykum asaalam! How fare thee these days? Would I impose myself upon thee for a meal and some directions?
They smiled as they heard him talking, as if he had said something funny, but waved him over and gave him a ride on the back of the horrid creature they rode on.
- We’re gess’in you’d want to talk to an elder of our ville, the one he held tightly as they rode told him in some strange accent he had problems understanding.
- Indeed, a parley with them would be suitable. In fact I have the desire to convey a message to a Vault in this here area, which in fact should not be a far walk away.
They kept silent until they let him off the animal, almost in the lap of a very old, wrinkly man smoking an old fashioned narghile with brightly lit colors, and the soothing sound of bubbles rising from it.

- One who speaketh the old tongue, where arth thou from?
After explaining his story and how he had been chosen from the few to take upon himself this fatal quest to submit a simple message, which meant life or death for his Vault, to the Supply Vault in this area, the old man briskly answered that the Supply Vault had not existed for a long time. It had been sacked by raiders equipped with large weapons and ABC-suits, which had taken them completely by surprise. The few survivors had silently ascended to the surface, through the bloody ponds and breathless bodies their brethren had left behind them and viewed the outside world, something barren and hopeless. Having no place to go they used the vault as a place to fall back into, while setting up this small ville – town – to live in. Others had joined them in time, survivors from similar events or surface dwellers which had lived topside since the Last War.

While being told this story from the venerable old man he did not speak. Nor did he speak as he slowly gaited towards the old vault, to see with his own eyes that it had been destroyed. This world that he had once viewed as having great potential had now become just what his tutors had told him: reckless and horrid. As he had been told to do he brought forth his machete, and wondered if the people monitoring his pulse could see how hopeless and wasteful he felt, based on the curves and beeps of their machines. Harikiri. A cruel and crude way to die, but somehow they needed to know that there were nothing here. He contemplated the irony of him dying here, completely exsanguinated, on the slopes of their so called survival, bleeding to death in a world which it self seemed to bled slowly to death, on a hungry stomach no less.

Fishermen say this all the time, constantly complaining about the lack of fish. ”No fish anymore. All of’em gone with’em winds, or waves, if you prefer.” All of them, they say – and still they come home from long and heroic journeys with ridiculously large fish unknown to the world, caught from the deepest depths of a really deep place. “Pff,” they say, spitting on the crowd. “It really isn’t a big deal.” Shortly after, everyone gets drunk.

I don’t like fish. I never liked fish. I once went out in a boat to catch some fish. Actually caught one, too… I wasn’t a bad fisherman, in other words. I knew the techniques, I had the cool sunglasses, the funny vest, the professional stance and the look you have when you try to look like a smart hawk. All was good, until I actually caught one. It was slimy, scaly, tried to make soap bubbles with oxygen, wiggled and it tried to take the hook with its eye.

I don’t like fish…

I do, however, like bubble gum. There is some sort of dark shadow lingering over me, whispering “bubble gum, yum, yum” in my ears all the time. Sitting in meetings, I’m just like the smokers, shaking, breathing heavily, tapping fingers, eyes moving around franticly as if being followed while sitting still. My jaws automatically move up and down, munching on the lovely, juicy, bubbly, gummy and very fictional bubble gum that seems to be lacking. All the smokers look at me and feel my suffering, and we all become brothers in arms, fighting against the dire need for a smoke – or in my case, bubble gum.

When I was short and had bruises on my knees, there was an ice cream with bubble gum flavour. I think it might have been the start of it all. Ice cream is the closest a child comes to pure bliss, fluffy clouds, monster trucks, snowball fights, food fights, mud fights, mock fights, real fights and bathtubs. Any ice cream can do that, but for me, the bubble gum flavoured ice cream was awesome. It was delicious, let me experience the taste of fluffy clouds and monster trucks and on top of that, I didn’t have to chew bubble gum, because I was eating the greatest combination ever.

All of a sudden, they stopped. No more bubble gum ice cream combination awesomeness. I got the most confusing and heartbreaking answer from my local and very Spanish ice cream salesman. “Que? El ice cream del bubbly gumbos combinación? No, nada, no more, mi amigo.”

Even though we spoke different languages, we understood each other through our passion – once shared, now lost.

Recently, I saw a shop with a sign outside. “New! Fish Ice Cream!”

Now I’m depressed. And I can’t find my bubble gum. And I’m in a meeting. And I’m sharing my suffering with the many other smokers in the room. All of them are looking at me with reassuring eyes, telling me it’s OK and that we’ll all go out soon and take a smoke.

I just want some bubble gum…

He had grown old over the course of time — ancient even, in the eyes of some — his body slowly rotting away, leaving an open carcass of metal to be viewed by the world. In some sense he was lucky; many of his generation ceased to be efficient, and started rambling and go insanely humane. Society lost their experience and competence, and sometimes it went so far that they had to be dismantled, “to preserve the order of our society” as the government said. He was however still valued as one with worldly wisdom, and that might be the reason he worked with what he did. Being hired by the state in a non-existent intelligence branch is no small feat, even if the pay isn’t very good. Even so, he often wondered: “how long can I keep this up, when I’m surrounded by these trigger-happy younglings?”

He knew he would finish his case today, it was as good as solved, and so he went to work with a strangely heavy heart, his legs slightly sagging behind him as he walked. On his routine trip to the coffee machine in the cafeteria, to get his dose of wonderfully refreshing caffeine, he stumbled in on a party, people singing and throwing confetti in the air, which landed heavily on a huge prod-day cake. A quick glance on the cake made him realize that he had completely forgotten his android apprentice’s prod-day, and he cursed himself for his old fashioned ways. This was one of those days he just should have made his cyber brain amplify the production of caffeine, so that he didn’t have to put up with this ridiculousness. His colleague was well liked in the department, so “he’d probably get loads of presents, anyhow it’s not like anyone remembered my birthday” he thought for himself. He quickly skipped out of the room, after getting a monstrously large coffee, and prayed that nobody noticed his presence and that this entire ruckus would make his colleague forget that he hadn’t brought a gift.

“Hey, do you have time to come into my office just a minute”, his boss’ voiced boomed over the interphone. “Yeah, no problem, I’ll be there in a sec.” Usually he would hate going to have a chat with his boss, but now he actually felt relief. He’d do anything to postpone the completion of his assignment. Inside the office he was offered coffee by the secretary, which he heartily accepted. In his dark voice his boss asked him how the assignment went, and he had to reply that he would finish it today. “Great…”, he thought, “now I have to do it today, I can’t postpone it any longer.” And then the chatting started. The horrible, horrible chatting he always had to start when in the boss’ office. “You know I saw a documentary yesterday about the curiosities and stupidities of the past, where they — among other things — stated that in the past they said something like ‘to know the future you must study the past!’ Isn’t that just ridiculously hilarious? They actually thought the past was good for something other than entertainment! Man, humankind sure was a bunch of dimwits back them.” He couldn’t do anything other than laugh of course, but he noticed that when his boss said this his mind computed it as a correct statement, even though his gut feeling told him something is off. Like his body wanted to twist in disagreement but the cybernetic parts of him refused, and forcefully silenced his body. But how could this be?

“I was thinking of you when I saw this”, his boss said. “I guess you might even remember some of it. You’re from the time before the Merging, right?” This was one of those questions he hated above all other things in life. When someone asked that question it either meant they were bluntly offending him or that they actually cared about the past. He decided on the latter and gave the answer he always gave to someone partially interested and semi-intelligent: “It is true that my generation was caught in the end of the merging of humans and androids. Our fathers and mothers and older brothers and sisters fought in the beginning, but their chances of winning were diminutive. That’s how Moore’s Law works, as you know. I only remember vague pictures of that time, I remember they fought until their hands no longer served any other purpose than killing and dismantling, until they could no longer stand of exhaustion, and their feelings had long since been discarded, tossed into a vortex comprised of empty hardness. Then they fought on, until they saw they were no longer the stronger ones, slowly becoming aware how disgusting their weakly bodies had become, and they realized the potential that lies within them. That same potential which in fact is us today. They all became harder and better, faster and stronger, until they no longer could distinguish between human and android. At least this is what I think happened. My memories of this time consists of random pictures and stories, which doesn’t really tell the whole truth about what happened, like a puzzle with a lot of pieces missing, and you know you’ll never see the whole picture. As you said, we no longer care about the past for anything else than stupid entertainment, and records of the past are no longer of importance, only represented as old, smouldering and primitive books left alone in empty, dark and damp libraries, or in entertaining documentaries which ridicule the very idea of the past. I saw the war with my own eyes, but as all children’s eyes, mine deceived me. I know no truth about this war. No more than you or anyone else around us does.”

He stopped to sip his coffee, his mouth dry after his long speech, noticing with amusement that his boss was looking at him in pure and utter puzzlement. The kind of confusion you only get when you see a new and fascinating side of a person or an issue. He continued: “Something most people don’t know is that before the Merging, governments had actually put down laws to contain robots and androids, laws stating clearly that they had to show they were not human by wearing holographic halos above their heads. They couldn’t vote or take part of the free press, they couldn’t have top jobs or own weapons, and any android or robot outside after curfew without permission were dismantled, or at least so my late father told me. The first androids back then where clumsy and robotical, but supposedly it didn’t take long before they acted as human as humans, maybe fifty years. I guess you’ve heard about the legendary RH-7 model.” His boss silently nodded. “When the humans started talking to them and understand them, they realized in time that they were no longer soulless robots. They started to love them, and fell in love with them, as they in return fell in love with the humans, and soon marriages between humans and androids were no longer forbidden in some states. The laws I mentioned were abandoned, one by one. In the end they viewed themselves as cooperative and equal species, one biological, the other mechanical, and they lived together as equals with no laws discriminating between them, like it is now really. My father told me that the war started too fast for anyone to really comprehend, as if both extremist robots and extremist humans had worked together to start it at the same time, and it divided the world into their two extremes. The robots won of course, but not without a fight, as humans have always been a stubborn race. The stories my family had… oh, you should have heard them!” He sighed at remembering them, they were so beautiful, so magical. “They told me that the world today is just a shell of what it was before, an empty shell with broken down and rusted buildings smothered with decomposing trash and empty memories of a past long gone. Its strange how fast tearing something down takes, and how slow it takes to rebuild it again. The old governments went extinct and are only remembered as archaic stories, and new ones took their place, the ones we have today. There were a lot of people back then. Everywhere. Not like today, barren and deserted. And plants, grass, animals were everywhere. Sometimes I think — if I had the possibility — I could’ve exchanged my long life of being a cyborg just to feel real grass under my feet, or lie under the open sky, listening to the wind in the leafy trees and look at the stars…”

They didn’t say a word for quite some time, looking purposelessly around the room while they sat in heavy thought. “I think I actually managed to surprise him”, he thought to himself rather happily. Finally, his boss broke the silence saying “We should do that with humans. That would make our jobs so much easier.” He didn’t follow his boss’ trail of thought and wondered what they had to do. “We should write an appeal to the government, saying we want holographic halos above the heads of every known human left. Tracking them will not be a problem then, and their danger to society would without doubt decrease.” He had to struggle not to get up from his chair and throw his now empty cup of coffee at him and stride out of the room. “Yes. That might work” was all he said, “I’ll go back to my work now, I think.” Just when he had almost closed the door his boss yelled out “Hey, maybe the past isn’t so bad after all. If this goes through we will have changed the future, by studying the past!” He could hear him laughing all the way to the elevator.

He finished his last remaining paperwork, the bang of the rubber stamp concluding “too human” deafened his ears, and triple checked his gun before he left the building. There was a tingling in his body, a nervousness which shouldn’t be there, and as he came closer and closer to the metro it grew in him. Standing silently next to the foul-smelling low-lives in the metro didn’t make it any better, and when he went off the metro car at the last stop — her stop — it had almost taken over his whole body. Solemnly and silently pacing toward her building, zig-zagging between the people and the garbage lying in the street, like a slalom skier. No one but the poorest of the poor lived in these areas, so he firmly held a grip on his gun within his jacket.

“It’s always strange,” he thought, “that there is nothing special about the places they live. I wish they had something about them that made us realize why we have to do this. But they are just regular people, aren’t they?” Room 301, in house D of the Carrion Hotel Apartment Complex, had a red door with a name on it: “Eve”. He just stood there, breathing heavily, completely apathetic. With a loud creak the door opened wide and there she stood, reddish curly hair swaying in the puff of air created by hurriedly opening the door, blue and wonderfully large, round eyes looking at him with panicking confusion. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m from the police. I guess you know what will happen next.” He would’ve never thought that her beautiful, pale, freckled skin could turn even paler, but it did. “Do you want to do it yourself, or do you want me to do it for you?” He continued, “I have pills with me, it won’t hurt a bit. If you resist it will.” He could see tears running down her cheeks, she realized, her mouth opening and closing without sound, again and again, like a fish. He was taller than her, more than a head, his crude body standing in complete contrast to the shivering fragility of her existence. “Don’t…” was the last thing she said, as he shot her, the nanos making a slight whizz as they flew through the air and hit her. Nobody would know what happened to her, she would die momentarily of a heart attack, from causes untraceable for even the best doctors. He walked away, his head low, and heard the death cramps all the way to the metro. He hoped they were only in his mind.

That feeling! Again it comes, like carbon dioxide creeping onto my palate, tickling it hard like my mouth is full of foul smelling giant spiders, forcefully opening my mouth and making my taste sensors feel the unwelcoming aftertaste of pure sourness. My lungs are collapsing in agonizing pain and that wheezing sound you get when shoot someone in the neck bursts out of me. I’ve got the smell of metal in my sensory input, coughing up tobacco colored mucus. Violently spitting it out, I leave a long brown trace where it landed. I cannot fight it! The throbbing pain from my knees — no! I cannot fall! I have to hide it!

In a world where nano technology and cybernetics has merged so far into the human body that they can no longer be separated, there are almost no diseases left. He knew this, but he also knew there had to be something wrong. He had to be sick. Stumbling into his apartment he barely managed to plug into his computer, franticly googling cybernetic and biologic symptoms. “Nothing fits, oh my God, nothing fits except that!”, his existence yelled at him. “It’s there, everywhere, but it’s wrong, it has to be wrong!” Panic struck him and his hand hit the abort button harder than he should have, his insides felt like they’ve all evaporated. The last visible word before the computer died, with what sounded like a satisfied hum: “Diagnostic conclusion: Human”.

He knew what he wanted, just some Jarlsberg, smoked ham, a piece of good bread and a milk, but everything was so different here. He didn’t know the wares, how they looked, so they were difficult to find. After walking aimlessly around just looking at stuff he decided to cut to the case. He logged on to Google and made a search within the store for wares similar to what he wanted. Even though he didn’t know where they were he’d find them using GoogleStore, he had seen this Monoprix was Google Certified. It was no longer difficult to find what he wanted. “Google has made sure of that!”

He didn’t exactly look forward to paying for the groceries; French had never been his language. Standing in the line he noticed the old couple in front of him were German and felt some strange relief, at least he wasn’t the only one not fluent in French in the store. They were bying lot of stuff and when the lady told them the price, “soixante-onze ¥€$ quatre-vingt-dix-sept” his GoogleBabelfish quickly translated it to seventy-two ¥€$ and ninty-seven cents. They didn’t seem to understand that however, or maybe they just weren’t connected. Maybe they were Luddites or something. Anyway he had to help them, so that he eventually got to pay for his stuff – he was hungry – so he translated it back into German. “Zweiundsiebzig ¥€$ siebenundneunzig cent” he said somewhat louder than he needed. The German woman looked surprised at him and nodded a “danke” at him.

Walking out of the store he held the 5 ¥€$ he got as change to his eyes. He had always liked the picture of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Abraham Lincon standing next to each other with Notre Dame in the background. At least Google hadn’t gotten to the money yet.

Menn iført dress og kvinner iført kjole stormet avgårde i store og små sko for å rekke Operaen, for i dag var det nemlig Opera på “g” i denne lille, slapsete, dårlig belyste byen.

“Akk, som eg hatar slapseschnau!” ropte en nynorsk tysker. Han var brei om skuldrene og hadde et lite og koselig hode.

“Snøen er da fin den. Det er LIVET som er ille!” sukket en annen som elget seg fremover i slapsesnøens depressive vibber. Fra Operahuset kom det lyd. Massevis av lyd. Men det var ingen feit dame som sang, for det hadde ikke begynt enda. Nå sang en meget spinkel jomfrugutt.

“Ah, jomfrugutens lune sang,” sa en ung og visuelt artistisk kvinne som antageligvis eide et kunstgalleri i byens hippe sentrum. Hun strakte ut armen sin og lagde en “neu art” bevegelse som mange ikke-vitere innenfor kunstverden ble meget fascinert av. Oi, tenkte de. Oi oi. Jøsses. Hun der kan å være kunstnerisk. Men det synes ikke lederen i Galleri A! Han gryntet og snudde hodet i en dramatisk nittigradersvinkel vekk fra denne forferdelige “neu art” håndbevegelsen.

“Pah-teh-tisk,” hvisket han til sin gode partner i både kjærlighet og arbeid, som var meget enig. Han visste ikke bedre, så han ville nikket uansett.

Snøen stoppet, og med den stoppet også alle som var ute og gikk mot Operahuset. De så opp, fordi det er det man gjør hvis man merker at noe mangler visstnok, og alle jublet. Hurra! Det snør ikke! Hurra!

“En suksess!” ropte en mann uten å vite hva som var en suksess. “Fabelaktig! ropte en feit dame. Og så begynte hun å synge, og da var Operaen slutt.